TCU AD Jeremiah Donati dishes on Turpin scandal, Big 12 expansion, Jordan brand and more
Jeremiah Donati is always “on.”
There’s always something that has to be addressed when you’re running a Power Five athletic department.
As he settles in for breakfast at Snooze, a new hotspot off West 7th Street, Donati’s phone buzzes with information ranging from next season’s football uniforms arriving – “they’re pretty awesome,” he says – to an assistant coach in a non-revenue sport being a head coach candidate – “someone we’d like to keep.”
Oh, and let’s not forget the $100 million expansion project at Amon G. Carter Stadium that has fallen slightly behind schedule; the never-ending questions about TV contracts and the stability of the Big 12; the desire to broaden TCU’s fan base; and the constant social media feedback.
And it’s not even noon on a Friday.
“Having been here seven years and working as close as I did with Chris [Del Conte], I kind of knew what to expect,” said Donati, who is celebrating his one-year anniversary on the job this month.
“Of course, there were some curveballs, but that kind of comes with any job. I was really pleased with how the year went. I think we made a lot of progress both internally and also on the field and on the courts, but we’ve got a ways to go.”
Mr. TCU
Football is king in Texas and that rings true for TCU. Coach Gary Patterson has turned the Frogs into perennial contenders over his 18 years, and worked his magic to get them in another bowl game this season.
But it wasn’t the easiest of seasons.
The Frogs were in jeopardy of falling short of bowl eligibility, and Patterson mentioned multiple times throughout the season that he’ll never be surprised if “they get rid of me” one day.
Donati can only smile when asked about it. After all, Patterson has a statue outside the football stadium and has become a beloved figure throughout the community.
“There are zero plans to get rid of Coach Patterson,” Donati said. “He’s an icon here and there’s a reason there’s a statue up. We’re incredibly fortunate that he’s our head coach and I’m looking forward to the future and working alongside of him.
“He’s Mr. TCU.”
Part of that mindset, though, is why Patterson has kept his job this long. Donati likes that the athletic department’s biggest name doesn’t take anything for granted.
Donati has always been around sports. He walked the halls of Washington State’s athletics department where his father, Richard, served as a team physician during his childhood, and spent time working for a big-time sports agent, Leigh Steinberg, after he finished law school.
But he has never seen an athlete or coach as driven as Patterson.
“Gary is a very motivated guy. He doesn’t sit around flaunting his Peach Bowl and Rose Bowl trophies, or his career win percentage,” Donati said. “He’s trying to get better every week, so he probably sees everything that way. He probably goes day to day, week to week, year to year. That’s the beauty of him.
“He’s got a unique competitive spirit that I’ve never really seen before in a coach.”
Biggest curveball
Donati couldn’t have asked for a much better start to his tenure.
Three weeks after he took over for Del Conte, the Frogs won the Alamo Bowl. The men’s basketball team snapped a 20-year NCAA Tournament drought in the spring. This fall saw the women’s soccer team win their first NCAA Tournament game.
But, when you’re dealing with college students, incidents are inevitable. Donati’s first significant crisis occurred during football season when star returner KaVontae Turpin was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend after the Oklahoma game.
After that arrest, a previous domestic violence arrest involving Turpin surfaced from last spring in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
The TCU football coaching staff didn’t know the full extent of the incident, saying they were only aware of a property damage charge, not a battery charge included in the arrest report, and Turpin faced no discipline last spring.
Once everything came to light, Patterson dismissed Turpin from the team.
“We really came together and showed how we operate,” Donati said. “It wasn’t a deal where we were trading texts and emails to figure it out. Gary and I met with the staff, with everyone that was involved, and here’s what happened. Be upfront and transparent about what happened.
“How do we get better? What are we going to do going forward? We figured it out pretty quick.
“I know how Gary operates and he knows how I operate. It was a learning experience and one hopefully we won’t have to do again. But if something like that came up, we’d know how to operate even more effectively.”
The incident led Donati and TCU to change the reporting structure when an incident such as Turpin’s arises from last spring. It’ll be similar to how the department handles Title IX issues.
Donati doesn’t want coaches in any sport feeling responsible to investigate the matter on their own when the university has its own police staff that is experienced in doing so, and likely would’ve discovered Turpin’s full arrest report last spring had they looked into it.
“We just changed our reporting structure, much like Title IX, just take it straight to the top,” Donati said. “Take it off your shoulders moving forward. We’ve mirrored that behavior reporting process to our Title IX reporting process.”
Donati realizes it’s solely on TCU to handle these sorts of incidents too. The Big 12 has no interest in becoming like the NFL where it acts as judge, jury and executioner on disciplinary matters.
“It’s on us to identify, investigate, punish, discipline, to do those things within the institution,” Donati said. “If there’s multiple, that’s where you see the conference get involved. That’s happened with other institutions.
“Our commissioner [Bob Bowlsby] is 100 percent right – they don’t want to involve themselves. If they involve themselves with every discipline issue with every institution, they’d have to add 50 staff members.”
Eyes to Year 2
Donati has little complaints about how his first year went.
He’s restructured the athletic department to create an executive committee, he’s built up the social media department to give today’s fans their desired 10- to 15-second highlight clips and quick-hit content and is in the process of improving the game-day experience.
Year 2 already has built-in excitement with the completion of the $100 million expansion project at Amon G. Carter Stadium.
All 22 suites have been sold. All loge boxes have been sold. And 70 percent of the club seats have been sold.
The only issue? The uncharacteristically heavy amount of rain the area got in September and October has delayed the project by a couple of weeks.
“We’ve been able to make up a bunch of days in November and December, but technically we are still a few weeks behind,” Donati said. “I think our team will be able to make it up. The problem was we needed to put steel in the ground and once steel is in the ground, then you can have bad weather days.
“But the problem is when there’s a lake out there, it’s hard to put steel in the ground. Our big thing is, it may not be 100 percent complete for the first game [Aug. 31 against Arkansas-Pine Bluff], but can it be functional so that the club seat holders and suite holders can occupy it? That’s really our biggest goal right now.”
The expansion project also includes a new video board that is 50 percent larger than the current video board in the north end zone. That’s an important part of the game-day experience in today’s sports world.
The game, regardless of sport, simply isn’t enough for today’s fan.
Donati understands this as well as anyone, and is working to find ways to make TCU’s game-day experience better across all sports.
“The two things I really want to do this year is spend a lot of time measuring our student athlete experience and measuring our fan experience, and improving both,” Donati said. “But I don’t think you can make improvements until you know exactly where you stand. So we’re going to spend a lot of time really looking at that. I like what our game day experience looks like, but I think every four years or so you’ve really got to freshen it up.
“You’ve got to stay up with the trends and really listen to your fan base. There are some things that we won’t be able to do, but I’m really excited about finding ways to interact better with the fans leading up to game day and on game day.”
Part of that, in Donati’s mind, is continuing to educate and encourage fans to transfer unused tickets back to the school.
Donati had success with a grassroots campaign for football’s regular-season finale against Oklahoma State over Thanksgiving weekend, getting thousands of additional fans into the stadium with what would have been unused tickets.
He’s doing similar things for the men’s basketball team.
“This is not a TCU issue, but every school across the country has the issue of filling empty seats,” Donati said. “Nobody has figured it out exactly how to do it. There’s not a magic button to push, so a lot of it is grassroots, roll up your sleeves and do it. We did that for the Oklahoma State game and it was really well received.
“I think it probably gave our guys an advantage that may have helped them pull out the ‘W.’”
Getting ‘Ws’ in every sport, of course, is what Donati is trying to accomplish at TCU. So far, so good in Year 1.
“I found that there’s a huge opportunity to be successful here at TCU from a competitive standpoint,” Donati said. “I’m the biggest TCU fan, but I can’t affect how the guys or girls play, but I can do everything I can to put us in position to win.
“I’ve got an amazing team around me and I’m really pleased with how the first year went. But it’s not lost on me that we need to get better. I need to get better. It’s fun looking back on the year that was, it was an exciting year for me personally, for my family.
“It’s been a great year.”
In his own words
On Big 12 contraction/ expansion talk: “Every conference would be interested in Texas and Oklahoma. I can’t speak for Texas, but I think they’re really happy in the Big 12. We have an amazing setup where everybody plays each other, you have a conference championship and I think our path to the College Football Playoff is as strong as anyone. I think Oklahoma has proven that.
“The conference is as strong as it’s been in 10 years. Conference realignment and television contracts go hand-in-hand, and a stronger conference results in a better TV deal. But I know there’s a sense of calm now across the college landscape, the last moves were in 2013. Nothing is permanent or final, but I don’t expect to see any movement for a while now. Maybe we’ve got it right.”
On CFP expansion: “I think the system is working. We probably need a few more years under our belt. The issue that people don’t realize if you expand the College Football Playoff, it’d completely blow up the bowl system.
“Year in and year out, the four best teams are in it, irrespective of what happened in 2014 [when TCU was left out]. The Big 12 has added a championship game since then. Had we played in the championship game and beat Baylor, we wouldn’t have dropped out of the top four. It’s a little difficult to compare 2014 and now because it’s not apples to apples.”
On if switching from Nike to Jordan Brand is an option: “We’ve had zero conversations about going to the Jordan Brand. It’s owned by Nike, but they don’t want you wearing Jordan shoes and a Nike swoosh shirt. Frankly, the Nike deal is better for us because there’s more Nike gear than Jordan gear.
“Anything is possible, but I don’t see it. To me, I’m incredibly happy with what Nike is doing for us. We’re not discontent with where we are. Things can change in the future, but we’re pretty content with where we are with Nike. We’re a proud Nike school and have been with Nike since the early 2000s. I don’t foresee that changing anytime soon.”
On growing fan base beyond just TCU alums: “We’ve always tried to brand TCU as the hometown team. Our T-shirt fans so to speak, our numbers are up. If you drive through downtown, you see all those banners everywhere, ‘Purple Friday,’ the mayor is such a big advocate of supporting TCU. We want to secure Tarrant County as TCU.
“Those fans are incredibly important because we don’t have a huge alumni base. We need to find those types of fans for our venues. Our football stadium seats 45,000 – that’s more than half of our living alumni so we have to find those people elsewhere. It’s absolutely critical that we have non-traditional fans getting on board.”
On being active on social media: “I welcome all feedback – good, positive, negative, even extreme, but I won’t respond to profanity. I get some crazy things sent my way that I won’t respond to. If you reach out to me, I feel a sense of obligation to get back to you. Sometimes it’s not as timely as I’d like. As you’d imagine, I do get hundreds of emails and I do have a full-time job and get plenty of emails and phone calls in addition to that. I do my best. I don’t hit everybody, but I try to.
“I enjoy it. Part of my job is to help people find a connection to TCU. For some people, it’s a season ticket. For some people, it’s making a donation. For some people, it’s just having an interaction on Twitter. That’s OK too. Being a major gift donor isn’t for everybody. I understand that.”
On the Cheez-It Bowl: “We haven’t sold through our [ticket] allotment. One of the things that’s hard with bowl games is so many people go to StubHub and secondary markets to get their tickets, so it’s difficult to ascertain how many Frogs will be there. But I think we’ll have a good showing.
“We’re also doing a ticket deal where fans can buy tickets and donate them to local military out in the Phoenix area. That’s been a really big success too.”
This story was originally published December 18, 2018 at 9:00 AM.